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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28542429">Understanding People With ADHD</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/kingofpentacles/pseuds/kingofpentacles'>kingofpentacles</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Death Note (Anime &amp; Manga)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>ADHD, Christmas Decorations, Christmas Eve, Christmas Shopping, Communication, Gen, Libraries, M/M, Mostly Gen, Research, Slow Burn, Teasing, Unresolved Romantic Tension</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 23:01:18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,916</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28542429</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/kingofpentacles/pseuds/kingofpentacles</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Matt and Mello navigate ADHD, learn to communicate, and steal from Hobby Lobby. Merry Christmas, one and all.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Matt | Mail Jeevas/Mello | Mihael Keehl</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Death Note Secret Exchange 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Understanding People With ADHD</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>prompt: mello helps matt with his adhd<br/>for: fiat_luz on twitter </p><p>i looked at the prompt and decided that it needed a good dose of christmas fluff, and this is what i got!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The atmosphere in the nearest public library was warm and cozy. Mello might have called it romantic, if he was the kind of person who said things like that. The main lights were high above him, but also, a yellow glow seeped from fairy lights strung along the walls of the lobby, contributing to the richly comfortable and Christmas-y feeling of the library. It wasn't a huge place, but Mello admired whomever put up all the decorations. There were good quality dark green wreaths with bright red ribbons on each wall in the entire place. It smelled like books, and faintly, coffee. Probably, someone around the corner was studying for their final exams with a Thermos. Mello remembered doing the same almost every year before he left Wammy’s house. </p><p> </p><p>But Mello hadn’t done that- or celebrated Christmas, for that matter- in a long time. He’d forgotten the smell of books, and how cheerful the holiday season was. He found himself lighting up at the sight of decorations, and deeper into the silent library, at the endless bookshelves, tall and full with knowledge waiting to be soaked in.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>That night, he settled on the couch with one of the books he'd checked out, which was titled <em> Understanding People With ADHD </em> . The disorder was actually pretty interesting. Mello couldn’t really relate to it, but it sounded sort of magical and frustrating at the same time. <em> Many people with ADHD struggle with executive dysfunction that seriously affects their lives, </em> the introduction to the book said. <em> But they are also some of the most creative, spontaneous, and energetic people you could ever meet. </em> That definitely described someone he knew. Speaking of..</p><p> </p><p>The quiet, beeping music of his GameBoy sounded across the room as Matt walked in.</p><p><br/>"Didn't know you could still read," he said lightly. "Good for you, Mello."</p><p> </p><p>"Dickhead," Mello said easily.</p><p> </p><p>“Nah,” Matt mused, curling up into a ball on the other end of their ratty couch. Mello just kept reading and ignored Matt’s little character dying over and over. Each time he fell into a swamp, or the void, or got stomped on by a monster, whatever- it played a sad little tune that made you want to get back up again so the game wouldn’t be so disappointed. Which Matt did (get back up again), over and over. <em> Beep beep beeeep </em>, cried the game when he inevitably died. </p><p> </p><p>The atmosphere of their lowly lit living room was cozy in spite of sad 8-bit background music. The warm, comfortable feeling in his stomach reminded Mello of the library, and he wondered whether they should get some fairy lights or wreaths in here, to make it a little prettier. It was a nice thought. But realistically, it would be like putting a feather boa on Jabba the Hut. They couldn’t make their shabby apartment pretty if they tried. It was comfortable, at least. <em> This </em>was comfortable- reading on the couch next to Matt, the heat of his presence little more than a meter away. </p><p> </p><p>Either an eternity, or an hour- probably an hour- later, Matt suggested they watch a movie. They picked a romantic comedy they said they’d watch ironically, but ended up genuinely enjoying. It was about a woman (named something boring) who kept reliving the same twenty-four hours on Christmas Eve, or something like that. Anyway, she (Amanda?) got a concussion, baked banana bread, and fell in love, and Matt and Mello were cheering for her (Rose?) the entire time. </p><p> </p><p>As the film progressed, they spread out on the couch, and ended up bumping knees and shifting a bit closer together every minute. The movie was good enough, though, that they were both glued to the screen the whole time, and loosely held hands and pushed their legs together unconsciously. Only after (<em> Kate </em>) got her happy ending did each of them wake up from that daze you get watching movies, realize they were touching, and separate. </p><p> </p><p>“Wanna watch something else?”</p><p> </p><p>“Nah," Mello said, feeling a little dazed, trying to shake himself awake. It was night now, he realized, and it had been dark for a while. Matt eventually shut his game and walked around the apartment shutting the curtains like he did every night. </p><p> </p><p>"So, ADHD." His voice came from a room away and was a little muffled. (So he <em> had </em> seen the book title. Mello had wondered about it earlier.)</p><p> </p><p>"Yeah?" Mello said. </p><p> </p><p>"Didn't know you were so interested in all that psychology stuff."</p><p> </p><p>"You don't see why I'd want to be informed about ADHD?" Mello deadpanned. </p><p> </p><p>Matt's head stuck out from his room, several feet away. </p><p> </p><p>"If you really want to <em> understand </em> me," Matt's voice had a sarcastic lilt, mocking the title of the book, "I don't see why you wouldn't just ask me about it."</p><p> </p><p>Mello stuttered a little. "Well- I wanted to be educated and hear from the experts first," he came up with randomly, an obvious cover for <em> yeah, I genuinely didn't think of that </em>. Matt didn't fall for it.</p><p> </p><p>“Well, when you decide who’s more of an expert, I’ll be here.” </p><p> </p><p>"Fine," fell from Mello's mouth, but there was no truth behind it. His mind was racing, berating him for not seeing the simple answer, and already plotting for the future. Matt went to bed, and Mello stayed up a little longer on the couch. </p><p> </p><p>From his position (and from a small-ish window) Mello had a limited view of the night sky: about three faint stars could be seen from their apartments main window. Three stars in a black, unforgiving sky. </p><p> </p><p>He wondered what he was going to say to Matt. Matt.. He seemed cool almost all the time. Bored. But if he wasn't bored, he was racing with energy. Both sides of the spectrum of normal human emotion, equally intense. Matt was like that: all or nothing. He was going to be the best in a certain subject, but he didn't care about the other ones. He loved cigarettes and hated alcohol. He loves me, he loves me not. </p><p> </p><p>But was that a bad thing? There were good words for that kind of trait: spontaneous was one of them. Creative, hardworking, passionate. Calm, cool, determined. There were bad words, too. Irrational, impulsive, fidgety. Bored, mean, angry. It depended on who he was talking to, whether it was good or bad. </p><p> </p><p>Who was to say ADHD was a disability? Maybe it was just a quirk. </p><p> </p><p>..Then again, <em> Understanding People With ADHD </em> had made it clear that it was difficult to have. It made socializing difficult. It made your life difficult. It wasn't fair to people with ADHD to say that ADHD is just a quirk. It wasn't fair to Matt. Even if Matt didn't appear to need help or at least want to talk about it, he'd just invited him to. And then there was that conversation a couple of nights ago..</p><p> </p><p>(What he had said during their conversation the other night had been running through his head all day. They had gotten drunk off some peppermint thing Matt had almost definitely stolen and Matt had said something along the lines of "ADHD is a huge part of who I am and you know nothing about it, dude" and Mello had said, "I want to understand you, it's just that we can never really talk unless we're drunk," ..or something like that. They had talked all night, and kept drifting towards each other, hands sliding together and eyes connecting sometimes..)</p><p> </p><p>The window seemed to blur the more Mello stared at it, and he ended up with his head resting on his hand. Eventually, as he thought, his head slipped and his chin bumped into the arm rest. He winced. Time to go to bed. </p><p>
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</p><p>Christmas Eve morning: </p><p> </p><p>"Dude, I think I was a centaur in my past life." </p><p> </p><p>Mello started to roll his eyes, but instinctively corrected himself and took a sip of coffee to hide his irritated face. </p><p> </p><p>"I had the weirdest dream, and I'm starting to think at one point my mom was a horse. She had horse energy." </p><p> </p><p>Matt chattered a bit, talking about his dream, which turned to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles somehow. Mello tried to genuinely listen, but found himself entranced, for some reason, by Matt's hair. </p><p> </p><p>It was a little wild from sleep. Matt rolled around a lot in sleep, and it made his short curly hair stick up every which way. He never took care of his hair anyway, so it was permanently frizzy, even more so now.</p><p> </p><p>It made him look soft and relaxed, not to mention vulnerable, as he explained the plot of a kids show in vivid detail. How he could do this but not study for more than an hour, Mello had no idea. But he wasn't going to judge anymore (well, he was going to try, at least). That was the whole reason for this research/communication thing. </p><p> </p><p>"..you got me?"</p><p> </p><p>"Yeah," Mello instinctively responded, waking up a bit.</p><p> </p><p>"One thing: I hate shopping. I don't spend money when I can steal." </p><p> </p><p>Mello scrambled to catch up. What had he been talking about? Turtles, Christmas episode of the turtles, Christmas, decorating.. Oh, stealing Christmas decorations. "We're trying to be normal citizens now, remember? Not criminals. We definitely don't need cops on us, with our records. And besides, this place would look even more like shit if we got a bunch of cheery Christmas decorations in here."</p><p> </p><p>"I call bullshit," Matt declared. </p><p> </p><p>"You're impossible."</p><p> </p><p>After arguing for a while, they decided to go shopping and did <em> not </em> steal; although Matt was seriously tempted when they drove by a Hobby Lobby. ("Come on," he complained. "They're homophobic, you know. It'd be homophobic not to steal from them. And they have really good Christmas stuff.") They ended up visiting a Dollar Tree instead, since Hobby Lobby was insanely expensive (and tempting). They didn't have lights, but they did have a ton of tinsel and cheap shit that they could drape everywhere, and hopefully that'll give the same effect, right? Mello wondered. ..Meanwhile, he felt like he was looking at Matt too long, too many times. He was so close all of a sudden, since last night, or maybe before then. Every once in a while, he would lean in and suddenly he was just slightly too close, and Mello imagined leaning over and smelling his hair, for some reason. </p><p> </p><p>It was kind of annoying and (intriguing?) at the same time. He couldn't tell if Matt was really standing closer than normal (to mess with him? why else?), or if his brain was just warping everything for some reason.</p><p> </p><p>By the end of their errand running, they had a small tree, a shit ton of tinsel (whatever the hell that was), and a really lazy looking Nativity scene. The sheep looked bored. When they got home, Matt drifted over to the couch and curled up on it, hunched in on himself like a hedgehog. Mello got to decorating, not able to help from glancing at his friend every few minutes. </p><p> </p><p>Eventually, he stepped back and looked at the whole apartment. He sighed. </p><p> </p><p>"Matt," he said loudly, jolting the boy out of his haze. </p><p> </p><p>Matt looked around, and nodded easily. "I like it."</p><p> </p><p>Mello stared. "Seriously?"</p><p> </p><p>"Um.. It does look a little.." Matt gazed at the room and smacked his lips. In the manger, Baby Jesus seemed to give a sigh. "..Drab." </p><p> </p><p>Mello groaned, looking like he wanted to pull out his gun at the decorations and threaten them until they got better. Or at least, looked less out of place in their worn apartment. He had been right; you couldn't make this place pretty. </p><p> </p><p>He glared at Matt as an <em> I told you so </em>, and fished a bar of chocolate from his jeans. It was a little soft, so it didn't snap like he liked it to. Nevertheless, he chewed it hard, somewhere between enthusiastic and vicious. He started to take the decorations down, but Matt protested, coming off the couch to put a handful of tinsel back.</p><p> </p><p>"I'll fix it for you, Mel," he said. Mello sighed. Weirdly, it felt like it had been a long day, even though it was just before noon. Actually trying hard to make this place look something like his childhood Christmases and utterly failing had taken something from him, and he felt vaguely like pouting. </p><p> </p><p>"Could you even go shopping by yourself?” He challenged Matt. “I had to stop you from spending all our money on random crap like, three times. How did you even live without me?"</p><p> </p><p>Matt looked at him. There was hurt in his eyes. "See, dude, it's shit like that. Didn't you say you wanted to understand me, the other night? Understand this, asshole: don't insult me about things I can't control."</p><p> </p><p>"I-" Mello was caught off-guard, and felt his stomach sink a little. "I didn't know you even remembered that." </p><p> </p><p>"So you thought that I thought that you were just randomly into ADHD all of a sudden?"</p><p> </p><p>“I’m sorry. That wasn’t a nice thing to say.” Mello practically had to kick himself to get the words out, stumbling and sounding like he was reading off a card. He felt a little embarrassed at himself, that it was this hard for him to apologize. He was in his twenties, if barely, and was legally an adult. Shouldn’t he be better at this? But the law had nothing to do with nature. Nature said that he still sometimes had childish urges that were completely unadult. Nature made Mello bad at apologies. (Still, all that meant was that he had to practice.)</p><p> </p><p>“I’m sorry,” he said again, more firmly this time. “I didn’t mean it.”</p><p> </p><p>Matt hesitated, but nodded his acceptance, flipping the screen of his toy up and down while he thought. “You mind going out again then?” It was true, Matt probably couldn’t do all the shopping on his own (lists, planning, and deadlines were not his forté). </p><p>
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</p><p>Mello didn’t mind. He was realizing now that he already helped Matt with plenty of things, and it was instinct to point him in the right direction, and encourage him, in his own way. Mello hadn't needed to do research after all, just to listen (and pay attention).</p><p> </p><p>They decided to put some real effort into it this time, and returned some of the stuff from Dollar Tree, just to scrape up every cent they had. They easily spent twice as much as before at a flea market, and (after Matt insisted) Hobby Lobby (although they did a fair amount of "borrowing" as Matt called it).</p><p> </p><p>Matt also insisted on hiding a few things he bought, making Mello turn away as he swiped a stolen card for them. </p><p> </p><p>They decorated all afternoon, taking much longer than Mello had with the initial things from the dollar store. Matt put on a Christmas playlist, and Mello hummed sometimes, under his breath. Matt was more the type to belt it out, although he couldn't carry a tune in a bucket. It was incredibly annoying (and cute, but Matt didn't need to hear that). </p><p> </p><p>They ended up having enough supplies that they decorated the kitchen too, and put up a few wreaths in the hallway. The end result was actually kind of.. quaint. Mello had ended up getting things that reminded him of the library, dark green and bright red and low yellow lighting (Matt pushed him into impulsively buying the fairy lights). It was less expensive looking than the library, but it was very <em> them </em>, not to mention cozy-looking and warm. They kept the simple nativity scene, but decorated it with tinsel, making even the sheep look a little more happy. </p><p> </p><p>As much as the living room looked like the library Mello had visited, he couldn't help but also be reminded of Wammy's House, mostly from the things Matt had secretly gotten. The little Christmas tree had also stayed, and Matt had bought a silver angel for the top, similar to the one they pulled out every Christmas at Wammy's. Stacked next to the tree were a few small presents Matt had wrapped in newspaper, another reference to their childhood. Besides the tree, Matt had gotten a cinnamon-scented candle, a reminder of a little blonde girl from Wammy's House who had gotten a candle for Christmas and lit it every Christmas Eve in the sitting room; she made it last four years. Cinnamon always reminded Mello of her, and simple kindness and generosity. But the apartment also reminded him of Wammy's House just because of how happy he was, and having Matt by his side for his first real Christmas in years. </p><p> </p><p>Mello walked around the living room (it didn't take long), occasionally trailing his fingertips along some wreath or bauble. It was pretty in the room, and glittering everywhere. It was- dare he say- romantic. He shot Matt a smile, uncaring that he probably looked ridiculous, grinning so openly. It was going to be a bitch to clean up, but it was also so pretty in here. </p><p> </p><p>They sat together on the couch in their newly Christmas-ified apartment and watched another clichéd romcom movie that was enjoyable in its ridiculousness. Matt pulled out another thing he'd snuck from the store: a small box of candy canes. Naturally, they sucked down the end of their respective candy canes until they were sharp as needles, and fought with them like swords.</p><p> </p><p>Their first kiss tasted like peppermint.</p>
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